


God's Consolation Prize

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: You Make Me ___________________. [1]
Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Anxiety, Depersonalization, Depression, M/M, Magic and Science, Prescription Medication, generally weird, misuse of medication, potentially disturbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:05:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3293135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From college professor to deity, and back again.  Oh, well.  Whatever.  Never mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God's Consolation Prize

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a line in the song, The Blank Generation, by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Part of the summary comes from Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana.  
> I am not involved in the production of Constantine and this school is not involved in the production of Constantine. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

The click of the tape recorder's 'play' button hits him like a scream in a silent room. Ritchie shudders. Getting to his chair feels like an unfathomable labor, but he does it, feeling acutely the air around him (too cold), the eyes of his students, the floor beneath his feet. Gravity. The world turning.  
This is what it's like, now.  
This, or he's not here, at all.  
Which is what comes next. His body settles into his chair, and that sense of unreality begins to creep in around the edges. Soon, it's like watching a movie in a dream. He listens to his voice on the tape:  
We exist is in a strange space. We're animals, yes- science will bear that out- but we're more. What is consciousness? We've spent the better part of recorded history trying to figure that out. Science will tell us that consciousness is one neuron talking to another, and recording the results.  
(Jeez- I came here for a Comparative Religion class. No one said anything about science.)  
(I know. This was supposed to be an easy 'A'.)  
(I heard the teacher was on drugs.)  
(I heard the teacher was bipolar.)  
(I heard it was an English guy.)  
(What?)  
From across the sea inside of his head, Ritchie hears all of this, of course. They don't bother to try to be unheard. When he was in school, they were better at hiding things. That was what made it fun.  
But what's fun, now? Life has changed so much- and he's not about to get on some kind of Luddite kick, or start yelling at people to get off of his lawn but-  
But it has changed.  
Or he's changed. Too much to really feel like he has anything to do with this anymore. It's been like this for a while. His recent... experience just- reminded him, he guesses. As though he'd put up water to boil and absent-mindedly gone, left it to steam away. Now, all he has is a burnt kettle and a sense of his own irrelevance.  
There comes a flattening, now, in waves; washing over him and taking him away, as he sits in his chair, behind his desk. Neurochemicals ebb and flow, and some days are like rolling down a hill, and some are like walking up the hill after you've had to construct it, yourself, out of the flesh of the earth. The meds help, of course, but eventually, you'll find yourself at the end of too many bad days, and then, you'll have to get your dosage adjusted; start the whole thing again.  
How do you adjust for losing everything?  
That's a little too dramatic.  
But the human brain probably wasn't meant to go the places he's gone. Or to carry him to those places. Still, he's not sure which it actually is. If your brain is in your body, and he left his body behind, then what went to the other plane? Is the soul separate from the brain? Or is the brain quantum in nature? It's one for the philosophers, he guesses.  
Which, technically, he is.  
It's not really philosophy, anymore, though, if you know it's true. Philosophy is the search for truth, and he found it, didn't he?  
And gave it all up. Because Jim stupid Constantine told him to.  
But that's the way it's always been. And part of why it was so easy and so difficult to leave John, years ago, is that he got to feeling like a show pony. If he was smart, if he made the leaps that everyone else was afraid to make, it was because John would be there, looking at him, with that expression just for him. Ready to catch him if he fell. Ready to push him, if he didn't want to throw himself forth. It was impossible to not spill exactly what John wanted to hear, all the conclusions he hadn't known he'd come to until the words were pouring from his mouth. It was like channeling: John put him in touch with something else, something bigger than himself-  
It's just a way of dancing around the truth. If he was suddenly more capable than he'd ever been, it was because that was what John wanted from him. Somehow, it was impossible to not give John what you knew he wanted.  
Now, if Ritchie was God- well, a god- however temporarily- what does it mean that it was all for John? And that he's human again, now, because of John.  
Ritchie isn't supposed to drink with his medication.  
“I'm not supposed to do a lot of things,” he says to himself, as he gets out of the cab; shoves some money into the driver's hand, and staggers forth. His voice sounds so small and remote, like he's got water in his ears.  
The sound of his knuckles against the door is like that, too, and he stands there for a couple of minutes before he thinks to knock again. The wood is too hard against his hand, and he thinks of the blood vessels momentarily compressed then dilating, under his skin, and he wonders if he's hurt himself, in a way too small to see. Something begins to creep in on him, something terrible that makes him feel as small and as remote as his voice, and he really, really shouldn't drink with his medication. All of the other times, he's been fine, but now, his breaths feel like marbles rolling through his chest, small and transparent things that he could take out and hold if he could reach inside.  
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh,” he says, resting his head against the door. He picks it up again, knocks for a third time, feeling pathetic, too soft and too small, but also much too solid.  
The door opens, and Ritchie can't help but gasp in relief.  
“What are you-” John begins, but stops, “Come in. Drink?”  
“No. Yes. Yes. Please.”  
“Just a small one, then,” John says airily, and hands him a glass.  
“Thank you.” He holds it in both hands.  
“How's life been treating you, down here among us mortals?”  
“Don't be cruel,” Ritchie whispers, his voice worn down like a sucked candy. He drinks his drink.  
“I didn't mean to be,” John says, too slowly, and the words could be composed of vibrating particles, slowing to solidity. Marbles made of ice. Everything is in the wrong phase of creation.  
“I know what you mean,” John says.  
“What?”  
“What you just said, about everything being both unreal and too real.”  
“Did I say that?”  
“You did.”  
“Is this real?”  
“This house, you mean? Us, sitting here?”  
“Yes.”  
“It's as real as can be.”  
“I just can't seem to get my bearings.”  
“It's the come-down,” John says matter-of-factly, has another drink. “Tampering with reality's the best high there is, and that's all magic really is. When you do it enough, you get used to feeling bloody wretched for days, weeks, even months,” he shrugs, “afterwards. But you don't usually do these sorts of things, and to do so on such a grand scale, well, that's one hell of a hang-over.”  
“I know what it's like. I remember what it's like. I have bad days sometimes, days like this, when I don't even feel like I'm in my body- it's like my head is a balloon I'm just holding- I hear myself talk, and it's like someone else is making the words come out- but it's never been this bad.” He rests his head in his hands. “I can't control anything.”  
John raises his newly-filled glass. “Congratulations. That's the first step to recovery. I've read.”  
“Don't patronize me. I'm not some starstruck teenager, in love with the legend.”  
“No. That was never you. You had a bit of the philosopher to you, like the alchemists, the old gentleman sorcerers. It wasn't just a laugh for you, and it wasn't just a convenient high, or a way of impressing people, or a way of forgetting yourself for a while. You wanted to learn something. And you have. So, how does it feel?”  
Ritchie shakes his head. “Like nothing. I feel worn-away. Flat and dry and cold. Like the tundra. Like nothing will ever grow again.”  
“That's life.”  
“That's not life. Life is moving from one place to another, maybe as a distraction, but also because you know you need to. Life is feeling tired and going to sleep, being hungry and eating; it's having a body that feels things, needs things, that makes a dent in reality. I'm not even sure what's real.”  
“This house is real. We're real.”  
“I know that,” Ritchie laughs, “but I don't feel it. Do you understand that there's a difference?”  
“Yeah,” John says quietly, “I do.”  
“Good. Good. Can I have another drink, please?”  
“Are you sure that's a good idea?”  
He takes off his glasses, puts them back on again. “If I pass out and aspirate on my vomit, I'll wake up, or I'll die in my sleep. Either way, the shock will do me good.”  
“Well, that's certainly an attitude to have.”  
“I'm trying to be more detached. It's the only way to attain true happiness.”  
“How's that working out for you?”  
Ritchie shrugs, makes a noncommittal sound.  
And John laughs. From all the way down in his chest, with a toothy smile, the liquid in his glass bouncing like a wave on a sea.  
It's easy to smile. Ritchie feels himself do it, the expression inhabiting his face, painting a golden line down the center of his body. Like a new sunrise, only along a vertical axis.  
He drinks, then puts down his glass, hears the heavy bottom make contact with the surface of the table. It startles John, but Ritchie is too far away. It doesn't register that he's taken John's glass and placed it next to his own, but it must have happened, because he's holding both of John's hands in his, sitting half next to him and half on him. And the glass is on the table, not on the floor or back in the kitchen or anyplace else it could have ended up.  
“Every time we do something, choose one action over another, it creates a path to a new reality,” he hears himself say.  
“You were always going on about that.”  
“It's the basis of interdimensional travel. To get to a place, it first has to exist. But the question is,” he looks down in order to steady himself as he moves more of his body onto John's, “do you believe that these other dimensions already exist, or that they're being formed at the moment the action occurs?”  
“That, I don't know. Tell me what you think.”  
“I think,” he looks at the ceiling, lets go of one of John's hands so that he can push his hair back and straighten his glasses, “that everything is blank until something comes along to fill it. I think that reality writes itself as it goes along, and the only thing that convinces us that there even is a reality is that we're too small to see it happening.”  
“Is that what you saw in Shaw's dimension, reality happening around you?”  
He takes John's hand again. “No. If you move your arm, you don't invent your arm, then think, It's time to move my arm; it just happens. It was like not having a body, because everything was my body. It was like waking up, and everything being where it was supposed to be. Nothing bad was going to happen, because I wouldn't let it.”  
For maybe the first time since Ritchie's known John, John has nothing to say.  
So, that's when Ritchie kisses him.  
That's what he must have done, because it's happening.  
“Sometimes, you just want to do something to see what'll happen,” Ritchie says, looking down at John's hands in his.  
“That's the story of my life, mate.”  
So, Ritchie does it again. This time, he's aware of doing it; tells his body to move toward John, and it does. Tells his hand to let go of John's to brush away his glasses, then to make sure that they end up on the couch, and not on the floor.  
There are some things he can't tell himself to do, though, and for all that it feels- not real- but good, the feeling doesn't hold on. The feeling slips right off of him, and he remembers that, once, it wasn't separate from him. Once, if he kissed someone, it was all over, inside of him. Now, it's another breath of sensation, floating around the ceiling with his head and his brain and maybe his soul. Finally, he's brave enough to do this, and not only does it feel like a dream, but most of his body is buried in a dreamless sleep.  
Still, it's good. In a different way. John's taking over, pushing him back against the arm of the couch, putting his hands all over Ritchie, like someone feeling for a light switch in the dark: urgently, but careful not to break anything.  
“How far do you want to take this?” John asks.  
“How far?” He looks at the ceiling.  
“You're in a bad way.”  
“You're a psychiatrist, now?” He moves, not sure whether he wants to push John away or pull him closer.  
“You don't have to be a psychiatrist to see it.”  
Ritchie waits for John to get off of him, move back to the other side of the couch. But he doesn't. His hands are on Ritchie's face, gentle, soft.  
“Don't make me decide anything.”  
“Okay. Okay. But if you want something, you have to ask for it.”  
Ask for it? Is it for his security, or John's vanity? “Kiss me,” he exhales.  
“All right,” says John.  
This should have been their first kiss. It's long and slow and deep, and he tastes John, the liquor in his mouth and on his breath, and his cigarettes, and the taste of his spit. This- this helps. This is human, and it's- it's too much, too intimate, too personal, but it's what he wants. His head is still somewhere around the stratosphere, but this is- familiar. It's homey and it's real. It has to be. It's so boring. The taste of booze and cigarettes. It's the taste of... teenage rebellion. That's what Ritchie thinks of. Being nineteen, and sneaking shots of Jack Daniels at places that didn't card, dark holes around the college smelling of mildew and old cigarettes. Smoking out back in the alley at the first place he worked.  
This brings him back. He's still so far away, but it brings back the 'him' of him. His memories. He has memories. He's lived. His time has been his own.  
“Kiss my neck,” he tells John.  
John laughs. But it's not a nasty laugh. It's soft, and it's... pleased. Because he's doing what John told him to do. It's this soft, melting feeling, and Ritchie's- he feels himself become soft, inside. Someplace, far from him, somewhere, someone he's very close to is feeling this.  
“It's not enough,” he murmurs.  
“What?” John asks.  
“It's not enough to make this go away.”  
“Make what go away?”  
“I mean,” Ritchie shakes his head, “it's too far way. I feel like I'm not here, at all.”  
“You're here,” John says, “This is real. I promise.”  
“A promise. From John Constantine,” Ritchie laughs, “What's that worth?”  
“Nothing. Not a damn thing.”  
“Kiss me again.”  
John kisses him, soft and slow. Not without pity. Ritchie can taste it. It has a taste of its own. But Ritchie leans up into it. Lets himself taste this, too, like it's for the first time.  
But then John says, again: “You're here. This is real.”  
“Thank you,” Ritchie says. There's a pinch behind his eyes, a peculiar, tight haze. “Thank you. John.” He touches John's face, feels the roughness of his stubble, the smoothness around his eyes.  
“This is real,” John says, and kisses him again.  
And it occurs to Ritchie. Gods demanded sacrifice. Is this, here, a sacrifice to him? If he were truly a god, he'd accept it, without question. That's what gods do. But he's human. He knows it. In the guts that seem so far from him, down in the center of the earth. Is he the earth, now? Is he the sky, as well?  
“Take off my shirt,” he says to John, in his far-away voice. The sound of tectonic plates cracking against each other. The sound of air currents roaring like rent silk over the sky.  
John does, and Ritchie starts to think it was a mistake, because now, he's cold. A liquid chill moves through him, and he pulls John close to him, glories in his warmth.  
“Please,” he gasps, though he doesn't know what he's pleading for.  
“What do you want?”  
“Just...” Ritchie tries to think, comes up lacking, “Take me to bed.”  
When they're there, he lets drop the pathetic facts. “Nothing really works. The way it's supposed to. I can't,” he looks down, then at John, again, “I can't really do anything, but I just- I just want-”  
“You don't have to explain.” John's expression is pained.  
So, Ritchie has to go on, has to say. As much as he can make himself. “No, I do. I want you to know. I want you to understand. I want you to want me, anyway.” He didn't say the last part.  
He did. “I do,” John says, kisses him, softly and briefly, a press of lips to lips.  
It's terrible. So terrible. Ritchie laughs, rolling and rich, down in his belly. Maybe he's still a god; maybe he's willing this to be so. If he were, he couldn't have made it better than this. “Kiss me.”  
John draws him up, into his arms, holds him close. It still doesn't feel real. But it won't. He'd hoped- like he's always hoping- that something will break the spell. That it will be like magic, like all of those times that the impossible happened, and he watched, and it shook him fully down into himself. It's not happening, and it's not happening, and he knows it isn't going to happen, but he has to keep trying.  
Both of them have lost their clothes, and they're on John's bed. He's cold, but he's warm, where his body meets John's, sparkling heat that wants to pull him down deeper, still, into himself. John's mouth is on him, on his skin, in long, sweet strokes that lull and muddle his nerves.  
“I want you to fuck me.”  
John rises up on his elbows, looks at him. “Are you sure?”  
“I need to.”  
“Why?”  
“What do you mean 'why'?”  
“I mean, why now, why me? Is this even something you like?”  
“I don't know. And why not you? John? Why shouldn't it be you? You're here, and you- you know.”  
“What do I know?” John gets off of him, lies down next to him.  
“You know what it's like to not be here.”  
“I don't think it's as bad for me as it is for you,” John says- is he apologetic?  
“No. It isn't.”  
“Is this what you want?”  
“Yes.”  
Then, John's poking around in a drawer. Taking out the necessary items- and there's the feel of a ritual about it, or a scientific experiment. The alcohol is easing off, and Ritchie's feeling slightly more structured, slightly more organized, on the inside, and is this a good thing? Now, that he's flattened out, had time to begin to live with what's happening, is this really what he wants? This is what life has always been like: the process of cleaning up a mess he made when he was so sure, before his natural uncertainty returned.  
“Do I dare disturb the universe?” he whispers, his hands over his eyes.  
His body feels cold, in temperature, and existentially. As though he weren't even warming to the touch of reality, the tangible world slipping right through him. It's scary when you're trying to claw your way back. Exhilarating when you want to go.  
“Let's do this,” he says to John, “How do you want me?”  
“Probably easier from behind.”  
“Right.” He turns so that he's face-down on John's bed, pillows his head on his arms.  
“If anything feels even the slightest bit wrong, you tell me to stop.”  
“Will do.”  
He can hear John's look of disapproval, but John gets started, easing him open with his fingers. And Ritchie starts thinking about doors being a house's orifices, how we pass in and out of them, through them. And how going into Shaw's world was like passing through water, but when coming out- that terrible shudder, that convulsion. He feels it again, now, shallower, starts and breathes in deeply.  
“All right?” John asks.  
“Mmm. I just...”  
“I'm going to stop.”  
“No. No. Please continue.”  
“You have to relax.”  
“Okay. Okay.”  
Then, John is inside of him again, a little bit deeper, and he relaxes, he lets it come. This softening of his nerves, as though needled by teeth. He lets John go deeper, still, probe him like a door's lock. Lets himself be explored, go from the unknown to the known. There's a strange pleasure to it, being inhabited in this way, and he arches up, against John's hand. The more he takes, the more he wants; it's something he suddenly needs- to find completion he won't know until he experiences it. “Do it,” he says.  
“Are you ready?”  
“Yes.”  
When it's John's cock, instead of his fingers, it's different. It hurts, a little, in a peculiar way. That's far from him, too, but slightly closer, now, that he's not really drunk anymore. John is behind him, his weight like a wall. Like a wall that can't be turned into a door.  
“All right?” John asks, his voice constricted.  
“I don't know how I feel,” Ritchie murmurs, turns his head. He moves his hips, in answer to John's, then again. Lets John ride that, swearing softly. Does it again, though it's difficult, with John's weight on him. The pain gives way to a sensation that isn't quite describable, bitter like a new bruise, edged in this bright tension. He moves again, into it, lets it flood him.  
“No,” John says, “Not yet. Please.”  
“I thought I could end it whenever I wanted to.”  
“Right...”  
He moves again, feels John move with him. Feels him jerk, careful to buffer his movement. Very careful. Hears him moan and sigh, breath stuttering, heart beating hard against Ritchie's back.  
The world is a silken sea around him. John pulls out, leaves him feeling cored, like, an apple, pleasantly irritated, endorphins slowly fading into his blood. He turns over, onto his back, pulls the sheets up around him. John is somewhere else.  
When he comes back, he starts a little, at catching Ritchie's gaze.  
“I'm sorry that wasn't very good.”  
“That's not why I wanted to do it.”  
“So, explain to me why.” John puts his boxer shorts back on, finds his cigarettes and lights one.  
“I was hoping for- and you'll forgive me this jejunity- but I thought I could pull myself back into this-” he lifts his hands, “into reality.”  
John shrugs. “There are sillier reasons to fuck. Did it work?”  
Ritchie shakes his head. “I'm used to not feeling like I'm fully here- sometimes, it's a comfort, actually- but it's been bad since-”  
“Yeah.”  
“Worse than ever. Like I said, I can't control anything. I was only there, in Shaw's world, for a little while, but it was- John, it was heaven.” He feels his throat constrict, a sudden press on his sternum.  
John sits down, careful to let the smoke from his cigarette blow away from Ritchie. “It was a lie.”  
“So? What is truth? What is reality? I don't know- do you?”  
“I just know that... I know that even if you run away from things, they're still there, and one way or another, you'll have to deal with them; the further you run, the worse it is when you have to.”  
“You really thought I would end up like Shaw.”  
John puts out his cigarette. “We're human, Ritchie. Whatever that means. We're not gods. To create a whole world- even if it's with the best of intentions- it's not what we're built for. It's not why we're here.”  
“So, why are we here?”  
John smiles, pats his hand. “When I find out, I'll let you know.”


End file.
